McGinniss Leaves Palin’s Wasilla: Palin’s Hate Vs. Alaska’s Kindness

September 6, 2010

(ChattahBox US News)—-Author Joe McGinniss, like many vacationers this labor day weekend, packed up and left his summer digs in Wasilla, Alaska next door to Sarah Palin’s home. McGinniss, best known for his 1980 bestseller about Alaska, “Going to Extremes,” spent the past three months in Palin’s hometown, to research an unauthorized biography about the deeply divisive former half-term governor of Alaska, tentatively titled “Sarah Palin: The Year of Living Dangerously.” McGinniss leaves with plenty of material. And what stood out the most, is Palin’s ability to stoke hate. And Palin’s small army of cultish followers, are equally as hateful, whom “welcomed” the author to Wasilla with threatening ugly emails, also attacking his family members.

When McGinniss was contacted by the owner of the vacant house next door to the Palins, he jumped at the chance to take up residence in Sarah Palin’s hometown. But he was met with hysterical Facebook accusations from Palin, of stalking and the perverted peeping of her daughter Piper.

Palin appeared on Fox news with her accusations, unleashing her followers on McGinniss, as well as erecting a stockade fence between the two properties.

Palin also appeared on Glenn Beck’s talk radio program with her complaints that McGinniss was spying on her family, wherein she called McGinniss an “odd character” and Beck decided he was “creepy.”

But after three relatively quiet months living alongside Sarah Palin, he takes with him home to Massachusetts, a renewed appreciation for the graciousness of the people of Alaska, contrasted with Palin’s vitriol and hate.

In an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, McGinnis points out the new politically charged environment that didn’t exist during his last stay in Alaska, in the 70s that he attributes to Palin’s influence.

“There’s still the same spontaneous warmth of the people,” he said. “I haven’t had a single unpleasant encounter since I got here.” …

“Now people here feel more engaged with national issues. And there’s more rancor, more blue-red division. In 1976, no one knew what party the mayor of Wasilla belonged to. Now it’s a big deal. I guess Sarah Palin was the first person to change that.”

But despite the friendliness and openness of the people in Wasilla, McGinniss told the Associated Press that some residents held a vague fear that something bad would happen to them if they spoke negatively of Sarah Palin, who is known for her vindictiveness.

Earlier in the summer, McGinniss noted he witnessed, up close and personal, Palin’s divisiveness. “By being here, I have learned things, and I’ve gotten an insight into her character, into her ability to incite hatred, that before I only knew about in the abstract,” he said.

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